Hold Congress Accountable

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We all are busy and cannot always pay close attention to what’s happening in Congress. That's why this surveillance scorecard is such a great tool. This website is a one stop shop to find out if your representative is standing up for civil liberties— or not.

The website allows you to hold your representative accountable by quickly looking up their scores (A through F) and then sharing their scores on Twitter. Scores can be tweeted directly to members of Congress with a note of encouragement or disappointment.

For example:

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If you prefer not to use social media, you can voice your concerns about domestic spying by signing onto an open letter to President Obama urging him to take immediate steps to end the mass spying.

The goal of the website is to spread awareness of the surveillance debates happening in Congress and put pressure on elected representatives to support meaningful surveillance reform. The scorecard does not factor in any public statements on NSA reform but rather only rates based on votes and co-sponsorship.

One of the most interesting aspects of the website is the list of organizations advocating for an end to mass surveillance. The partnering organizations range from Greenpeace and Demand Progress to the Libertarian Party and FreedomWorks. We don’t always agree with these organizations, but we all agree that it’s time to outlaw mass surveillance. Thankfully, the majority of Americans are also against NSA spying.

Good for the people that are standing up for the people who do not deserve to be spied on. This is supposed to be the land of the free, not the land of the NSA. I us the non tracking leave me alone search enginehttp://LookSeek.com a non tracking search engine good for everybody who is making a stance

The House passed an amendment on June 19 to require the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant prior to collecting the communications of American citizens. This is pretty basic stuff, and it’s not a partisan issue - the amendment passed with the support of 158 Democrats and 135 Republicans.

On Thursday night, the House of Representatives voted on an amendment (H.Amdt. 935), led by Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY), that would require the NSA and other intelligence agencies to follow due process and obtain a warrant to collect the communications of American citizens. Congress has come close to passing limitations on government surveillance since Edward Snowden exposed the extent of the NSA's intrusion into our privacy, but consistently came just a few votes shy.

As one of our over 6 million FreedomWorks activists nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and urge him or her to vote YES on the Sensenbrenner amendment to H.R. 4870, the Department of Defense Appropriations bill. Co-sponsored by a bi-partisan coalition that includes Reps. Amash, Lofgren, Conyers, and Massie, this amendment would disallow any funding in the bill from being used to search for the communications of U.S. citizens gathered without a warrant.

The government seems to have a data problem. While the NSA has apparently been storing massive amounts of data on innocent Americans deep within its sinister archives, the IRS and the US Census Bureau just can’t seem to keep track of anything. What a difference an acronym makes.

Along with many other pro-civil liberties groups, FreedomWorks endorsed the USA Freedom Act introduced by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner. The original bill contained language that would end the NSA’s bulk collection of data and increase transparency in government. We acknowledged that it wasn’t the perfect bill but it was a step in the right direction to reform the NSA. We had hoped that it would be voted on without significant changes that undermine the intent of the USA Freedom Act.

FreedomWorks has signed the following coalition letter, giving recommendations to the House leaders and Rules Committee on revisions to the USA Freedom Act that would more effectively protect Americans from the NSA's warrantless metadata collection. The letter was organized by the Center for Democracy and Technology.

When Blanche DuBois stepped off that streetcar named Desire and stepped into her sister’s rough French Quarter neighborhood, it was an era far different from our own. The New Orleans portrayed in Tennessee Williams’s iconic play wasn’t idyllic or gentle, but it had the charm of post-war cheerfulness. America had slogged through the Great Depression, won the fight against Hitler, and was rewarded with decades of prosperity. Stanley Fischer may have been a violent lout to his wife and sister-in-law, but there was a certain innocence to the time after the Great War’s sequel and before Lyndon Johnson’s guns-and-butter debauchery. Civil society was still a strong presence in American life and disputes were handled neighbor-to-neighbor. The idea of ubiquitous government surveillance in peacetime was alien.